‘More Nigerians living with Parkinson’s disease’

No fewer than 90,000 Nigerians are living with Parkinson’s disease, Consultant Neurologist, Dr Njideka Okubadejo, has said.

According to her, Parkinson’s disease affects 67 out of 100,000 Nigerians above the age of 40.

She spoke at a seminar organised by Funmi Fashina Foundation (FFF) in Lagos, to train doctors and other health care workers on neurological disorders.

Mrs Okubadejo said education and professional training of doctors are important in recognising and diagnosing medical disorders such as multiple system atrophy (MSA) and other types of Parkinson’s diseases.

She said most doctors did not experience diseases that were not common when they were in medical schools and as such should get more training on the job.

Okubadejo, who is an Associate Professor of Neurology at the Internal Medicine Department, College of Medicine, University of Lagos (CMUL), said the seminar was to intimate them with changing trends in their profession.

She said there are various diseases of the brain and one of them is movement disorder.

Okubadejo said: “This is a disease that affects a particular part of the brain that makes it difficult for people to move or that makes them have involuntary movement. They may shake and their muscle may tweak, they may be slow. So, it is a wide variety. Some of these movement disorders are common. Others are less common.

For example, there are people whose hands shake, especially when they want to write. This is called tremor. Some of the tremors can be so irritating that the person cannot write or sign his signature, they have to thumb print to authenticate their documents.”

These diseases, she said, are not caused by muscle weakness or stroke.

The seminar, she said, helped the doctors to become familiar with those disorders, adding that it will also guide them on how they can treat them. And where they can refer the patients to when they have difficulties. The purpose is that patients have access to doctors that are well-exposed and well-trained who can diagnose their condition earlier.

This is because if you diagnose many of these conditions earlier you can offer the patient treatment that can improve their quality of life.

A trustee of FFF, Mr Jibade Fashina, said little or nothing was known about the illness when his wife came down with it.

He recounted that his wife was taken to some hospitals and different doctors tried to diagnose the ailment with no success for about two years.

Fashina said eventually a doctor was able to recognise the disorder but to be double sure, “I took her abroad for more advanced diagnoses where it was confirmed again.”

He said a lot of people ascribed her ailment to weight problems, high blood pressure (HBP) but none got quite close to it until they met one Dr Ojo.

“This was about 24 months after we started looking for diagnosis. When she diagnosed it we went abroad and it took another one year for them to tell us she had MSA,” he said.